Wednesday, May 9, 2012

This week was my birthday and I received a long admired set of Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils, and I have been having a blast experimenting with them. They are oil based, whereas Prismacolor pencils are wax based, as such they have a harder core. They feel very different to use, and I have found a much lighter touch is required than with the Prismacolor. The only complaint I have about them so far is the limited colour range, 72 in the Rembrandt range versus 120 in the Prismacolor range, with the most lacking gap being the brown palette.

As well as the pencils I also bought a few tools that I have been pining over for a while. I got a Crop-o-dile edge cropper, and a few dies by Tim Holtz. I have also used the Tim Holtz Tattered Flower Garland strip die for the flowers, and the juniper sprigs are from the Tattered Pinecone die.

I've used the small easel die to create a stand alone picture rather than a card, and I have a feeling this is one die I will use a lot :o)

I am entering this into Mo's Digital Challenge, the theme this week is Anything Goes.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

... when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

It was my turn to choose the theme this month at Christmas Crafting! and I chose the poem Twas The Night Before Christmas.

I tried a new technique with this project. The stamp is from Magnolia, and I stamped that onto Bristol Board using black Stayz On ink. I then used Distress Inks and a water brush to colour the main parts of the image. Once completely dry, I used Prismacolor pencils to deepen the shadows and put in any fine work such as the berries.

I used Bristol Board rather than watercolour paper because it's intended for multimedia, and it takes the addition of the coloured pencils better than traditional watercolour paper does. I can see where a few watermarks have been left, but overall I was happy with this as a first attempt and can see the potential for a lot of creativity, and I feel I had a lot more control of the inks using the Bristol Board.

The box that I chose to decorate is an upcycled box from Domino's Pizza, they use these for their dippers and sweets. The manager of my local store was kind enough to give me some brand new ones to play with.

These little boxes are great for altering. They have a lovely parchment colour as the base, the commercial branding is easily covered with paper, and the inside is wax coated, making it ideal for giving food treats.

I hope I have given you some inspiration this month, why not try altering or upcycling a project!